What inspired Emma Lazarus' poem on the Statue of Liberty: Educating Stephen Miller

White House aide Stephen Miller may not want to "get off into a whole thing about history here," but we as a nation must. When on Wednesday Miller was asked if the new point-based immigration system advocated by President Trump and two Republican senators breaks with America's historic acceptance of "your hungry, your tired, your poor" as expressed by Emma Lazarus' famous poem "The New Colossus," Miller responded with a word salad that we have come to expect from the Trump administration's policy aides.

He offered a mishmash of statistics that are woefully out of date and inaccurate, peppered by jingoistic rhetoric that doesn't answer any real questions.

He then snidely asked how many immigrants needed to enter the nation to satisfy "Jim Acosta's definition of the Statue of Liberty poem's law of the land."

As the keeper of Emma Lazarus' archive and therefore, legacy, I can tell you that this history matters. Despite Miller's dismissive line that Lazarus' poem was "added later" to the base of the statue, it was in fact written specifically for the dedication of the Statue of Liberty on October 28, 1886. While it is true that it wasn't until 1903 that the poem was engraved on a plaque and placed on the pedestal of the statue, it was not, as implied by Miller's statement, added years later by some random collection of socialists. The poem was given to the Statue as a gift by the poet's estate after her death.

Affected by the people

"She was so profoundly affected by their strength, bravery, excitement and passion for creating a better life for themselves and their families that the poem 'flowed.'"

Lazarus, a Jewish woman and prolific writer, was commissioned in 1883 for the "Art Loan Fund Exhibition in Aid of the Bartholdi Pedestal Fund for the Statue of Liberty" to raise money for the pedestal's construction. Lazarus wrote the poem, a sonnet, after spending an afternoon watching and meeting Eastern European immigrants come off their ships as they sailed into New York Harbor.

She, like many other Americans, had preconceived ideas about new American immigrants: who they were, why they left their homelands, and what their hopes and dreams were for life in the United States. She was so profoundly affected by their strength, bravery, excitement and passion for creating a better life for themselves and their families that the poem "flowed."

"The New Colossus"

Millions of immigrants from all corners of the world, all socioeconomic levels and every possible migration story traversed the Atlantic and sailed right past the Statue of Liberty, and the poem that graces its base. To these men and women, as they themselves have explained in countless books, films, television shows, iconic photographs and oral testimonials, "The New Colossus" was a beacon of freedom that prophesized their future, and a new life that was realized by many of them.

To negate the truth of their experience is to relegate the very pillars of our society — life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — to, as Trotsky famously stated, and Reagan paraphrased, "the ash heap of history."

We should all rage against the dying of this light. It is the American people's light, and if we allow it to be extinguished, we as a country will have nothing left.

Originally published in the New York Daily News Opinion section, August 3, 2017.